Methodology

We ranked all 398
current metropolitan statistical areas based on employment data from the Bureau
of Labor Statistics from November 2001 through January 2013. Rankings are based
on recent growth trends, mid-term growth, long-term growth and the region’s momentum. We also broke down
rankings by size since regional economies differ
markedly due to their scale. For our big cities list, we ranked the 66 MSAs that each have more than 450,000 jobs.